Arthur Agatston Biography

Cardiologist and author

Born in 1947; married Sari.
Education:
Graduate of New York University School of Medicine; specialized medical
training at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of
Medicine, and New York University.

Career

Doctor in private practice, South Florida Cardiology Associates, Miami,
FL; University of Miami School of Medicine, associate professor of
medicine and director of the Mt. Sinai Non-Invasive Cardiac Lab; expert
consultant for the Clinical Trials Committee of the National Institutes of
Health; co-director of the annual Symposium on Prevention of
Cardiovascular Disease. First book,
The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for
Fast and Healthy Weight Loss,
published by Random House, 2003.

Sidelights

Florida cardiologist Arthur Agatston became America's newest diet
guru with his best-selling
South Beach Diet
book in 2003. The Miami doctor had not originally set out to write a
weight-loss bible, but instead had devised the healthy-eating plan for his
patients to help them avoid heart attacks and strokes. He originally
called it a "modified carbohydrate diet," but it became
known as the "South Beach diet" on its way to a publishing
deal

Arthur Agatston

that would put seven million copies on the market a year later and make
it the newest diet craze of the 2000s. A title linked to the fit model
types who populate the hedonist-hipster beach spot of Miami worked better
than images of his northern Miami waiting room, he admitted to
Time
's Joel Stein. "My waiting room is not exactly filled with
South Beach models."

Born in 1947, Agatston grew up in Roslyn, New York, and earned his medical
school degree from New York University. He went on to advanced training in
cardiology, and eventually settled in the Miami area and in private
practice with South Florida Cardiology Associates. He also served as an
associate professor of medicine at the University of Miami School of
Medicine and headed the Mt. Sinai Non-Invasive Cardiac Lab.

Agatston was already known in cardiology circles thanks to his research
projects. With a radiologist colleague, he devised a way to measure
calcium levels in coronary arteries, which predict the risk of a heart
attack. Their unique electron beam tomography scan, or EBT, ranks the
level of calcium in what is known in medical parlance as the
"Agatston Scale." But calcium deposits in the arteries were
just one part of the heart-attack equation. Agatston wondered
why so many people, himself included, seemed unable to lose that last ten
pounds they carried around the midsection. He worked out regularly, and
his only indulgence were low-fat chocolate chip cookies, but still he
could not shed his "spare tire."

Agatston began to look into research involving insulin resistance and how
the body converts calories into glucose. Insulin is a peptide hormone,
produced by the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, which regulates the
level of glucose, or sugar, in the blood. Food is converted into energy in
the form of glucose, but certain foods have a quick turnaround time, while
others take much longer to become fuel for the body's needs. Their
rate of conversion is known as the glycemic index, or GI. Its numbers are
an indicator of the blood-sugar level and insulin response to various
foods. If a food is converted slowly, for example, the GI, which rates
items on a scale of zero to 100, will be low.

On the other hand, eating something that converts quickly into
glucose—foods that hit the 70s range on the GI scale—means
the person will be hungry again sooner because of the insulin response.
Agatston wondered if stabilizing the body's insulin levels could
end overeating due to hunger and food cravings. Insulin levels could be
leveled out by avoiding the foods with the highest GI, which all seemed to
be made from refined carbohydrates. Examples are items such as white
bread, bagels, and pastries. Agatston devised a diet plan that avoided
these foods and included lots of others that had low GI numbers. He tried
it on himself, and shed eight pounds in one week.

Agatston then began trying it out on his patients in 1996. They came back,
thrilled they had lost weight without increasing their exercise level, and
he was pleased to note that their cholesterol and insulin levels had
plummeted. When a Miami television station did a story on his plan and
followed a group of dieters, Agatston became a local celebrity. Restaurant
chefs began offering menu items that adhered to his diet, which advised
eating foods with a GI of 55 or lower. He believed that a reliance on a
high-carb diet had helped Americans become the fattest nation on the
planet. "Nobody in the history of man ever ate complex
carbohydrates like we have," he pointed out in an interview with
New York Times
journalist Abby Goodnough.

The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for
Fast and Healthy Weight Loss
was published in April of 2003. It hit the bookstores just as Dr. Robert
Atkins' venerable "no-carbohydrate" diet was enjoying
a renewed bout of popularity. But some nutrition experts warned that the
famous Atkins no-carb regime, which was heavy on meat and saturated fats,
was unhealthy for the heart and arteries. Agatston's
modified-carbohydrate plan, on the other hand, promised to keep
cholesterol low and help dieters lose those unwanted midsection pounds. It
had three phases: during the first one, bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, and
even fruit were verboten. During the second phase, carbohydrates that were
rich in fiber were permitted, as well as some fruits. The third phase
provided suggestions for a healthy-lifestyle eating plan that was meant to
be adopted permanently.

Agatston's
South Beach
book remained on the bestseller lists for 26 weeks, with sales boosted by
celebrity endorsements that included Bill Clinton and Bette Midler. As
with any diet book, there were detractors, who claimed that a
food's GI rating had a lot to do with what else had been eaten
during a meal. They also pointed out that following a reduced calorie
plan—Phase One of Agatston's regime featured a daily calorie
intake of just 1,500—would cause anyone to lose weight.

Agatston followed up his immensely successful first book with
The South Beach Diet Cookbook: More Than 200 Delicious Recipes That Fit
the Nation's Top Diet
and
The South Beach Diet: Good Fats and Good Carbs Guide.
He was so busy promoting his book in 2003 that he actually regained a few
pounds. His wife, Sari, an attorney who handles the financial boon that
his book brought in, told him it was time to do something about it.
According to her, "I was the only person in the country,"
Agatston joked in a
People
profile, "
not
on the diet."